WFP staff show entrepreneurial side in annual competition
4th Edition of the WFP Innovation Challenge highlights best new ideas for solving hunger.
WFP has celebrated entrepreneurial staff behind some of the best new ideas at an awards ceremony, marking the end of an internal innovation competition. The ‘WFP Innovation Challenge’ was won by three teams aiming to help to track the impact of nutrition programmes, connect smallholder farmers to markets, and respond to climate change.
The winners fought off competition from more than 150 teams from across the organisations’s global operation to take home the award. In doing so, they secured support from WFP’s Innovation Accelerator to test and grow their projects.
More than 40 percent of the 150 applications came from offices in East Africa or the Middle East. An informal group of regional and country directors and WFP experts, the Innovation Advisory Group, selected the winners according to level of innovation and impact.
Executive Director David Beasley congratulated the winners. “It’s not always easy to start something new, but the teams have proved that every single one of us has a role in developing new ideas and putting them to the test,” he said.
Beasley urged staff to continue “thinking big” and competing to bring good ideas to life. “WFP’s Innovation Accelerator is helping us expand our culture of entrepreneurship, to bring the best ideas from inside and outside the organization so we can do even more to save and change lives around the globe,” he said.
The Challenge, modelled after successful initiatives in the private sector, asks global staff to brainstorm new, ambitious solutions to hunger. Since first running in 2014, more than 700 ideas have been submitted from 40 WFP Country Offices.
Meet The Winners:
SCOPE CODA — Tracking the impact of our programmes
After a successful pilot project in El Salvador in 2016, the project formerly known as MAPS has evolved into SCOPE CODA. SCOPE CODA is a monitoring tool for social protection and nutrition treatment programmes that uses handheld devices and contactless cards to capture, integrate and visualize key information and outcomes in real-time. The innovation has recently integrated with SCOPE, WFP’s beneficiary management system, and will be rolled out in 10 countries before the end of 2019, starting with South Sudan and Uganda. The award was accepted by representatives from the El Salvador Country Office, the Nutrition and IT Division.
Farm to Market Alliance — Handing Smallholder Farmers the Key to Markets
The Farm to Market Alliance (FtMA) is a collaboration between public and private organisations to help smallholder farmers unlock new opportunities and move from subsistence to commercial farming. It provides farmers with access to affordable finance, quality farming inputs, predictable markets, and effective agricultural and post-harvest technologies. Now operating in four countries, FtMA can be scaled up across developing markets. Representatives from the Supply Chain Division, Tanzania, Zambia, Rwanda and Kenya Country Offices accepted the award on behalf of the project.
VAMPIRE — Tracking the impact of major climate events
Inspiration for the VAMPIRE project came in 2015/2016 as the full force of the El Niño drought was felt across South-East Asia. Together with local partners and other UN agencies, WFP Indonesia built a dashboard to track the impact of drought and floods on food security. VAMPIRE brings different data streams into a single interactive map, showing the extent of drought affected areas, the impacts on markets, and the coping strategies and resilience of affected populations. WFP Indonesia Country Director Anthea Webb collected the award on behalf of the VAMPIRE team.
What happened next? Checking-in on two winners from 2016
Dalili (formerly known as Beneficiary Voices) is a smartphone app that helps Syrian refugees compare the prices of products sold by WFP-contracted grocery stores in Lebanon. Since winning the ‘Best New Idea’ category in 2016, the innovation launched a pilot that helps more than 500 refugees access the best prices and latest promotions. Learn more by clicking here.
Nutrifami is an online tool designed to help train food insecure communities in Colombia on nutrition and healthy eating habits through a number of mobile e-learning modules. In the past year, more than 5,000 Colombians have logged on with a smartphone or a government-sponsored “kioscos digitales.” Visit their website by clicking here.
To find out more about the WFP Innovation Challenge, contact global.innovation@wfp.org
The WFP Innovation Accelerator sources, supports and scales high-potential solutions to end hunger worldwide. We provide WFP staff, entrepreneurs, start-ups, companies and non-governmental organizations with access to funding, mentorship, hands-on support and WFP operations.
Find out more about us: http://innovation.wfp.org
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